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GREENBURGH, N.Y. – Town officials are close to finalizing the draft of an agreement with a Tarrytown developer hoping to bring a sports facility to Greenburgh.
Supervisor Paul Feiner said Thursday he expects the proposed 15-year lease with Game On 365 will be handed over to the town board this week and the council could vote on the agreement as soon as June.
If approved, the deal would bring a sports bubble, dubbed the Westchester Field House, with a clubhouse and indoor soccer field to the abandoned lot at 715 Dobbs Ferry Road.
“I just see so many positives with having more recreation, especially if there’s no cost to the taxpayers,” Feiner said Wednesday during a town board meeting.
Game On’s plan for an outdoor soccer field and 15,000-square-foot clubhouse attached to a 94,000-square-foot dome housing four turf playing fields and two hard court surfaces has become the town’s preferred option to occupy the abandoned lot.
The sports facility would pay an estimated $260,000 in annual rent to occupy the nearly seven-acre area left vacant after Frank’s Nursery went bankrupt and the town foreclosed on the property last year. Both sides said any lease agreement would be contingent on an environmental review and traffic study.
Last week Game On representatives were in Greenburgh, answering questions and concerns raised by community members and an anonymous letter criticizing the project.
On Wednesday, several town residents appeared before the board expressing their support for the facility. Jose Nunez said he didn’t see a negative side to the plan.
“It turns an eyesore into a bright eyespot,” he said. “To me it’s straightforward. Everyone wins here.”
Greenburgh soccer mom Stefanie Zednik said Game On would be a huge asset to the area.
“The site is perfect. It’s easily accessible,” she said. “I suggest we push forward because I think it’s a great project.”
Critics, however, continue to raise concerns about the details of the project’s agreement. They have questioned the legitimacy of the RFP process and pointed to the residential zoning of the site as well as the lack of a traffic study or recent appraisal of the land’s value.
“These are not things that should be decided because someone wants a soccer field for their kid,” town resident Hal Samis said Thursday.
Comments (4)
Also, its Feiner and Abinanti closing in, not Greenburgh!
And Feiner has declared the area safe from toxicity in the land as well as from the high tension wires overheard for all participants. After all, it's for the children... Not the developers, or the private businesses or Feiner's pockets. We're following in the footsteps of the decline of the Roman Empire. Et tu Paul?
It is standard practice in Real Estate for the owner of the property to prepare the lease, contract of sale, etc. The renter or buyer may want to negotiate some of the terms. Nevertheless, most real estate transactions follow the "Golden Rule": he who has the gold rules. In this case, it is the Town which is the owner of a site which is the right plot size, the right price, the right location and in the right "market" as supported by census data. These "rights" all work for the proposed tenant, Game On. What the Town Board has to justify to its residents is why the wrong zoning, the wrong building height, the wrong traffic conditions and the wrong rent are working for its taxpayers.
However since negotiations likely started as far back as May 2011 when Feiner first revealed that an indoor sports operator was interested and the urgency intensified as he became bolder in his advocacy, the proposed lease must by now be ready for prime time. Which means to me: BRING IT ON! Let's see the great work as it NOW exists thanks to Town Attorney Tim Lewis taking direction from Feiner. Given Feiner's intention to vote on it in June (13th?), that's only 33 days from now. Thus, let's get down to business and release the proposed lease for public inspection TODAY!!! After all, Feiner and Company have already had months to dot the i's and cross the t's.
And despite Feiner's attempt to marginalize concerns by labeling myself and others as "critics" or complainers (words with negative connotations), we are residents too. When considering all of Feiner's continuing mistakes and errors which cost taxpayers millions of dollars in needless expense, it is a pity that more residents aren't signing up as critics and complainers. In just this Game On debacle, the "$260,000 in rent" NEEDED to keep taxes from rising and preserve the remaining quality of life after you bag your own leaves or pay higher parking fines or see your water bill double or your town taxes increase over 50% in five years...well that doesn't quite make up in light of Feiner's refusal to extend the WESTHELP lease at its September 2011 expiration which is COSTING residents $100,000 PER MONTH ($800,000 from October 2011-May 2012) so far -- with no tenant for June or beyond. And just a few soccer fields away from "Frank's" is the site of the future home of the Fortress Bible Church and School which will cost our uninsured Town at least $4 million in Court awarded damages due to Feiner's indiscretions and incompetence -- and his concern for its increased traffic flow. So, soccer moms, there's a lot more at stake than Feiner sucking up to your special needs in return for your vote of confidence. How long do you think you could continue to live here were the Town Supervisor to bring Christmas to every resident and grant them their own wish.
****** For Soccer Moms *****
Since the Mr. Feiner and Game On were able to reach out to soccer moms (the pawns in Feiner's strategy) to come to the TELEVISED Town Board Meeting Wednesday to counter the disaster experienced when residents banded together in opposition at Feiner's UNTELEVISED special meeting held a few days before. Apparently you soccer moms hadn't gotten the word or cared enough to attend the relevant meeting but were "incentivized" enough to appear when the recruitment campaign came a knocking at your door.
Hey soccer moms, how come the Town's many parks and schools don't themselves provide enough soccer fields so Johnny can play? If you are unhappy with the CONDITION of those "few" existing fields, why don't you COMPLAIN about them to the PROBLEM SOLVER, Mr. Feiner. And, as I live near the Town-owned Presser Park (formerly Webb Field) on Central Avenue in Hartsdale, how come this spacious field remains largely unused other than hosting flea markets and the "visiting" circus (not to be confused with the permanent circus on Hillside Avenue). And do you think that one new indoor soccer field will be the antidote to all those needy soccer kids who will come from miles around. Game On's partners are no dummies. This location works for them ONLY because it is located near to highway access and egress. Go to Google and look at their other locations. One off I-684 in the woods and New Jersey in an industrial park. They know they won't survive just from Greenburgh patronage. At the Monday meeting held solely to discuss the Game On proposal, a woman involved with a woman's soccer league stated that there are no soccer fields for women to use...in fact, her league's players come from as far away as Connecticut and New Jersey to play. Confusing to you in that they travel great distances to play in Greenburgh? or advance warning that they have their eye on the same indoor soccer field -- just off the highway.
So, let's see the lease today Mr. Feiner aka "the laughingstock of the County Board of Legislators". Greenburgh taxpayers pay over $1 million to support the Town's full-time legal staff and many, many hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for outside Counsel (much of this expense used to defend Feiner's mistakes). Surely by now you've had the benefit of input from your four team members, so there's no reason to hold the lease from public scrutiny other than a ticking clock.
Game's on.
I was at the meeting and there were many more people there against the development of "Game On" than who were for it. The town lawyer did not know the value of the property. How can you rent out a property without knowing how much it is worth? If the town simply sold the property to home developers and then received real estate tax's from homes built on the site the tax money the town would receive probably would surpass the $260,000 rent that Game on would receive and have the money from the sale left to invest. There are baseball fields across the street from proposed site. Traffic would increase in that area to the annoyance of local residents. This is a real bad deal for the town.